affairs and beach stones

III - II

LAST NIGHT, WHILE you were sleeping, I stayed awake in the hope of being able to talk to Harry. This involved a disruption to our usual routine, which has been in place now ever since we both retired, and goes as follows. Every evening I prepare a rather lacklustre meal, nothing like the feasts you used to offer us: oven-ready lasagne, a chicken pie or a few sausages from the butcher in Peacehaven, who somehow manages to be both surly and obsequious. We eat at the kitchen table, perhaps engage in a little conversation about the dog or the news, after which I wash up whilst Harry takes Walter for his final walk around the block. We then watch television for an hour or so. Harry buys the Radio Times every week and high-lights the programmes he doesn't want to miss using a yellow marker pen. We have a satellite dish, and so he has access to the History Channel and National Geographic.

While Harry watches another documentary about polar bears, how Caesar built his empire, or Al Capone, I tend to read the newspaper or complete the crossword, and it's no later than ten o'clock when I turn in, leaving him to at least another two hours' viewing.

As you'll have gathered, there is something about this routine that inhibits real conversation or deviation of any kind. There is also, I think, something about it that both Harry and I find reassuring.

Since you've been with us, I make sure you have your meal, which I feed you from a spoon to avoid upsets, before Harry and I sit down to ours. And even though you are in your bed in the room down the hall, we do not speak of your presence.

Lately, though, I've got into the habit of sitting with you whilst my husband watches television. Harry has said nothing about it, but rather than joining him in the living room, I sit at your bedside and read aloud. We are currently enjoying Anna Karenina. Although you still cannot speak yourself, I know you understand every word I read, Louis, and not just

because you are doubtless very familiar with the novel. I see you close your eyes and enjoy the rhythm of the sentences. Your face becomes still, your shoulders relax, and the only sound apart from my voice is the television's regular hum coming from the living room. Tolstoy's grip on the female mind is, I've always thought, remarkable. Last night I read one of my favourite sections: Dolly's reflections on the sufferings of pregnancy and childbirth, and tears came to my eyes because so often, over the years, I've longed for those sufferings, imagining that a child could have brought Harry and me closer together – despite everything, I'm convinced he wanted children; and even when I knew this could never happen, I imagined a child might bring me closer to myself.

Whilst I cried, you looked at me. Your eyes, which have a pickled look about them these days, were soft. I chose to interpret this as a look of sympathy. 'Sorry,' I said, and you made a slight movement with your head – hardly a nod, but close enough, perhaps.

When I left your room I felt curiously elated, and perhaps it was this that made me sit, fully clothed, on the edge of my bed until past one o'clock in the morning, waiting for Harry to retire.

Eventually I heard his light tread on the hallway runner, his loud yawn.

'You're late turning in.' I stood in my doorway and kept my voice low. He looked startled for a moment, then his face crumpled back into tiredness.

'Can I have a word?' I held my door open by way of invitation, feeling again like the deputy head during my last days at St Luke's, when I often had to have a 'little chat' with a new teacher about taking the responsibilities of playground duty seriously, or the dangers of becoming too close to the more needy children.

He looked at his watch. I held the door open a little wider. 'Please,' I added.

My husband didn't sit in my bedroom. Instead, he paced around as if the place were deeply unfamiliar to him (which I suppose, in some ways, it is). It reminded me of our first night together at the Ship. My bedroom is very different to that room, though: instead of curtains, I have a practical wooden- slat blind; instead of an embroidered eiderdown, I have a duvet cover that needs no ironing. These items I purchased, along with the bedroom furniture, from IKEA when we moved in. I gave the whole exercise very little thought, and IKEA helped me, as they said, to 'chuck out the chintz'. And so out went all the bits and pieces I'd inherited from Mum and Dad – not that there was much: a fringed standard lamp, a wall mirror with ornamental shelves, a scratched oak table – and in came the IKEA look. I wanted blankness, I suppose. Not so much an attempt at a new start as a refusal to engage with the process. Perhaps a longing to negate myself from the location altogether. To this end, the walls are painted a biscuity shade, and all the furniture is made of artificial wood in a colour they call 'brunette'. That word makes me smile – such an odd word to apply to a wardrobe. Brunette. It's so glamorous, so voluptuous. Bombshells are brunette. And sirens. And Harry, of course, although now his hair is grey; still thick, but without the shine of youth.